Southwest and JetBlue have shown that social media is a great way for airlines to improve their customer service. With American Airlines’ recent Facebook campaign, the list of social media competent airlines has grown to three.
One of the most challenging tasks a branded Facebook page faces is growing the fan base. A well built Facebook page and strong brand equity with consumers does not equal Facebook fans. Fans aren’t going to magically find you unless you help them get there. A media spend can be costly, however, one of the most impactful and cost effective ways to grow your fan base is to tap into your email list. These people have already shown their interest in future communication. So why not reach out to them and encourage them to connect with you in your social channels? Especially when you have a good incentive and clear call to action.
American’s AAdvantage program did just that. Not only was it a smart move on their part (they gained about 250k fans from it), they gave their fans a great incentive: bonus miles for becoming a fan. And they also incorporated the new additions to Facebook pages — leveraging the visual layout of photos at the top of the page and using and iFrame to allow for interactivity within the tab.
The only downside to this effort is that there are now two robust presences for the American brand: the AAdvantage page and American Airlines page. The brand would have been better served if they had only one fan page and had AAdvantage as a tab. All American fliers should be fans of both, so why separate them? By combining these efforts, American would have been better able to build stronger relationships with their loyal fans. Now they have to do double duty. Yes, the content is slightly different for each page, but it would have been a smarter approach to build a content strategy that incorporated messaging from both pages.
What do you think about this promotion? Should brands have more than one fan page for different divisions of the brand?
Stacy is a Strategist in the Digital Innovation Group at Engauge. She has an M.S. in Integrated Marketing Communications from Northwestern's Medill School. Connect with her on Twitter @stacycohen. 